Cheryl Holt (6 page)

“Don’t fret, dear Kate. Nothing will happen. He’s tired and sick, and he needs our sympathy. I almost wish . . .”

“Wish what?”

“That he’d stay for treatments. We could help him. I’m positive.”

“Lord preserve us!” Kate grumbled, and Anne shooed her out.

“Lock the gate for me. Don’t let anyone in for the next two hours. And make yourself scarce. He doesn’t want you to see us.”

“What if he falls, and you can’t lift him?”

“I’ll fetch you. He claims he can walk, so I should get him in and out of the pool without too much trouble.”

“A likely story,” Kate muttered, as she grabbed her hat and gloves, and lumbered out the door.

Anne sighed and went to her bedchamber, donning a discreet bathing outfit. It was baggy and dropped to below her knees. Her legs and feet were covered with stockings, though she wouldn’t wear shoes, and her arms would be bare, but she could muddle through. If any embarrassment was to be had, it would be Lord Chamberlin’s.

At least she’d send him home smelling better than when he arrived!

She descended to his room, and he was dozing, the laudanum and tea making him drowsy. As she evaluated him, she pondered what it would be like to have once had so much, to have been the talk of London, a rake and a rogue, and supposedly the most attractive, most notorious bachelor in the kingdom, then to have lost it all.

He wasn’t a Romeo now. He was worn and haggard, ill, but not dying. Not yet, anyway. The moribund had an odor about them that, for some reason, she could detect, but it wasn’t perceptible in him.

Sensing her, he opened his eyes and scrutinized her costume, and he grinned. For a brief second, she noted an appreciative masculine gleam and was graced with a glimpse of the scoundrel he had previously been. How sad that he couldn’t muster the strength to permit that hale fellow to emerge.

The scamp had a suppressed randy streak. He’d proved as much the evening before, when she’d checked on him as she was retiring. She’d been surprised by his being awake, which had given him the chance to fondle her breast with his naughty hand.

She was baffled by that caress. While she’d been apprised of the antics couples engaged in when they were alone, no man had ever touched her intimately. She’d been kissed exactly once, at age fifteen, when her mother had allowed her to stroll with a boy at the harvest fair.

Other than that sole occasion, she’d had rare contact with men. Save for her brother, who’d departed at fourteen for employment by their father at Salisbury, her life had been filled with women. When she was a tiny girl, her mother had taken a job as Widow Brown’s companion. Anne had been raised on the property, had been taught to read and write at the widow’s kitchen table. Had tended her mother through a
protracted, fatal illness, then had done the same for Widow Brown, who’d died with no kin, and who had bequeathed both the farm and the house to Anne.

By transforming her legacy into the business she had, she was surrounded by and associated only with females.

She didn’t know anything about men, how they behaved, or what they wanted, so she wasn’t certain why Captain Chamberlin had been so brazen, and when it had been occurring, she’d been so shocked that she hadn’t reacted.

But throughout the remainder of the endless night, she’d ruminated over it. Her skin had burned where he’d petted her, and her breasts felt fuller, cumbersome, her nipples erect and throbbing till dawn.

Restless and aching, grouchy from lack of sleep, she’d somehow found the courage to face him, and she’d been delighted to discover that he didn’t recollect the incident. Thank heavens! If he ever mentioned the scandalous episode, she’d expire from mortification.

“Are you ready?” she asked.

“No.”

Perching on the mattress, she began unbuttoning his shirt. He didn’t help or hinder her efforts, and she was relieved. She was determined to wash him, and if he’d resisted, she might have tied him to the bedposts.

“Won’t your husband object to your bathing me?”

“My husband?” She was temporarily confused, but she hastily regrouped. “I’m a widow.”

“How long has it been?”

“Many years.” Her reply was deliberately enigmatic, for she wasn’t inclined to discuss her purported spouse, though she did have a complete tale to tell if pressed.

“How could that be? You can’t be a day over thirty.”

“Do I look that bad?” She took a quick peek in the mirror. “I’m only twenty-eight.”

“Oops. Sorry. My flattery skills are a tad rusty.”

He was silent as she finished with the buttons and tugged the hem out of the waistband of his trousers. She started to draw the lapels off his shoulders, as he struggled to sit up, but she pushed him down.

“Let me do all the work.”

“It’s awkward.”

“Shut your eyes. Concentrate on something else, on something pleasant.”

He did, and soon, an enormous smile creased his cheeks, though it was mostly concealed by his unruly beard.

“What are you envisioning?” she queried.

“You. Without any clothes.”

“Captain Chamberlin!” She blushed from the top of her head to the tips of her toes.

“Sorry,” he apologized again, but he didn’t seem very repentant.

“It won’t do you any good to distract or fluster me. I’m going to do this if it kills me.”

“You’ve made that very clear.”

“So don’t be difficult.”

“I’ll try not to be.”

She scowled at him, and a smile still curved his lips, and she suspected that mischief was his ingrained nature. Very likely, he thrived on rascality, and no doubt, had he been healthier, he’d have been impossible to tolerate.

Not intending to be dissuaded, she yanked at his shirt and tossed the fetid garment on the floor. He was rail-thin, and he was bandaged everywhere, the wrappings dirty and gray. Where he wasn’t bandaged, she could see spots where he’d been sewn, the stitchwork ragged and crudely accomplished. Some of the scars had healed while others, though they’d been inflicted months earlier, were red and inflamed.

No wonder he couldn’t get back on his feet!

“Dear God in heaven, what happened to you?” she murmured.

“I was shot a few times—”

“Shot!”

“—and stabbed.”

“They filleted you like a fish!”

“They tried,” he quietly admitted. “They didn’t succeed.”

He held out a swathed arm for her to unbind. “No,” she decided, “we’ll remove them in the water. It will be easier.”

Unsettled, her fingers went to the placard of his pants. They were laced at the front, and she commenced with the tie, when he stopped her. “Must we take them off here? Can’t we do it down at the pool?”

“It’ll be less taxing if you’re lying down.”

Because he’d lost so much weight, his trousers were very loose and simple to dislodge, and she pulled them down his hips, baring his stomach, his abdomen, but as his manly hair poked out, she halted.

This was so much more complex than she’d imagined it would be! It was one thing to bluster to Kate that she could waltz in and strip him, but it was quite another to actually do it. Another inch or two and his privates would be revealed.

She was no stranger to male anatomy. After all, she’d had a younger brother, but she’d heard that the masculine appendage grew bigger, just as a body did, and that the sight was too abominable for a maiden to view.

He was staring at her, waiting for her to proceed, and she was flummoxed, nervous, so she reached for the knitted throw and arranged it over his lap. If he had any opinion as to her abrupt burst of modesty, he had the courtesy not to voice it.

She dragged his pants over his toes and forced herself to glance down.

His right leg was intact and hardy, though there was a bullet wound above the knee, but his left leg was as bandaged as his upper torso. The dressings were soiled, and they smelled putrid.

“How long has it been since your wraps were changed?”

“I don’t recall. I wouldn’t let those crazed sawbones near me. The only remedy they ever rendered was to bleed me. The only advice they offered was to cut off my leg.”

The incessant razor slashes, inflicted to drain the ill-humors, marked his arms. What petty tortures he must have endured! So he’d lain in his own filth, refusing any assistance. What a tragic tale!

“Would you rather die than lose your leg?”

“Yes. Wouldn’t you?”

She supposed she would. “I realize it’s a radical notion, but some medical people have begun to suggest that cleanliness promotes recuperation and stems infection. Was there no capable doctor at Bristol?”

“They were all fools.”

She could picture his cadre of physicians, fussy, arrogant, clumsy buffoons, hovering over him and bellowing orders. He wouldn’t have been a submissive patient, so the Chamberlin household must have been in a constant state of upheaval and strife. It was no surprise that his sister had been at her wits’ end.

She’d borrowed one of Kate’s billowy nightshirts, and she tugged it on him and adjusted it around his waist so that the hem would fall when he stood. The bagginess of the garment attested to his frailty. It hung on him like an enormous tent.

“My bathing costume?” he smirked.

“Unless you’d rather be buff naked.”

He blanched. “The shirt will be fine.”

“I have my wheeled chair in the hall. Can you make it that far?”

“We’ll see.”

“I’ll go slowly.”

She guided him to his feet, and he tottered, so she folded herself around him. Except for the kiss her beau had
bestowed at age fifteen, it was the nearest she’d ever been to an adult man, the single occasion she’d hugged one.

Her breasts were crushed to his side, her feminine parts to his thigh. It was an electrifying experience that rattled her nerves and jumbled her insides, causing butterflies to swarm through her stomach, but she didn’t have time to daydream or fantasize. If she wasn’t cautious, she’d drop him on his skinny arse. What a mess that would be!

They took clumsy steps but, without catastrophe, they made it to the chair. Though it was a distance of a few feet, he was sweating, trembling from the modest exertion.

She draped a blanket over him, which had him grousing. “You’re handling me like an ailing grandfather. Why not shove me into the corner and ignore me?”

She grinned. As if she could
ignore
him! He wasn’t the sort one could neglect. He was too overbearing.

“Quit complaining,” she shot at him. “I don’t want you catching a chill.”

He was so sickly, so depleted, that the slightest modification of condition could lay him low. He wouldn’t be strong enough to fight off an ague.

Utilizing the clever ramps Kate had constructed, she maneuvered him to the pool.

“Can you swim?” she inquired.

“For God’s sake!” he snapped. “I wasn’t always an invalid.”

“Don’t bark at me. Your sister will be furious if I let you drown.”

“As if she’d care,” he grumbled, sounding defeated.

Clutching his shaggy hair in her fist, she tipped his head back. “She cares. Don’t ever think she doesn’t.”

They were so close. She could detect the individual whiskers of his beard, the flecks of black in his blue eyes. It seemed she could read his mind, could sense his bottled-up fear and fatigue, anger and frustration, sadness and melancholy. She
knew things about him she had no way of knowing, understood details for which there was no accounting.

Flustered, she moved away. “Let’s get you in.”

“Is it deep?”

“From knee-high to chest-high, depending on where you are. And there are rock benches carved into the edges. Under the water.”

Glancing about, she wondered what he thought of her grotto. It was an ancient place, a trick of nature. The Romans—at least she believed it had been the Romans—had hewn the stones and blocked the spring to create the pool. At the far end, the water trickled over a dam and meandered to an adjacent stream, where it flowed away.

Surrounded by shrubs and trees, it was secluded, quiet. Enchanted, too. As a girl, she’d been convinced that fairies whispered, their voices concealed by the rushing current, and she’d spent thousands of hours tiptoeing and searching under leaves, trying to unearth the elusive pixies, but she’d never been lucky enough to stumble upon one. Even though she was twenty-eight, she still swore that they resided in the ferns.

Bracing herself, she gripped his wrists as he teetered to the first stair. He doused his foot, then his calves, soaking his bandages and wetting his nightgown.

As the water climbed to his waist, she hugged him again and led him so that he was sitting on the rocky shelf. He couldn’t speak, and there were tears in his eyes.

“What is it?” she frantically asked.

“Hurts . . .” he managed to grind out.

Of course, it would! At being so anxious to carry on, she’d disregarded the obvious. She spread his legs, and snuggled herself between them, flattening her torso to his.

“Focus on me,” she coaxed, wishing she could absorb his pain. “It will pass.”

“Jesus . . .”

“Breath in,” she directed. “And hold it. Now, let it out.”

He repeated the process over and over, then he embraced her, his good arm clasping her with all his strength. His face was buried at her nape, and for a lengthy period, they were melded together. She could perceive the illness in him, could feel his fever, could hear his heart beating too rapidly.

Gradually, he relaxed, his muscles flexing, his pulse moderating. His arm slackened, and she pulled away. The encounter grew intimate, their lips an inch apart, and she felt so much like kissing him that she frightened herself.

She wasn’t some hussy, some coquette practiced in the art of seduction. She wasn’t even sure
how
to kiss him, and the realization brought a blush to her cheeks that had nothing to do with the temperature of the water.

As she was a natural caregiver, her affection was produced by the fact that he was suffering and she couldn’t stand to witness it. She invariably became more attached than she should to people who were in distress.

Positive that his musings were a far cry from hers, she couldn’t help smiling. If she pressed her mouth to his, he’d probably be so aghast that he’d have a seizure.